Engineers, programmers and futurists believe that programmable robots that
provide sexual companionship are likely to be commonplace in the 21st
century, at more or less the same time as computers become able to process
information as quickly as the human brain. The implications of tactile
sexbots, likely to contain vibrators, sound systems and other equipment,
are as significant as they are unexamined. If you thought the fight over
the CDA was bad, wait till Rev. Falwell and his many pious friends in
Congress discover Sexbots. For better or worse, computing might be
breaking down another big wall. Techno-futurists have a sorry record when
it comes to predicting technology and the future. Remember the
intergalactic travel that was the centerpiece of Disney's Tomorrowland?
The magnetic hover cars, cancer cures, and climate-control systems that
were supposed to have been long in place by the Millenium? And only a
handful of technologists imagined how big the Net would get. But here's a
futuristic vision that's a far surer and troubling bet than e-sex:
sexbots. For several years now, engineers and futurists have been writing
(quietly) in academic journals and other venues about the intuitive
computer-programmed robots - sexual companions that contain vibrators to
provide tactile stimulation and sounds systems to provide love talk - that
some researchers believe are likely to become commonplace in the next
century. A few years ago, these predictions could have been brushed off
as more digital hype, but computers are obviously becoming more
intelligent and intuitive, and are fast processing information as rapidly
as the human brain. Inventors and futurists like Ray Kurzweil (author of
The Age of Spiritual Machines), are guaranteeing that computers will equal
or surpass human intelligence early in the 21st century. So sexbots not
only don't seem far-fetched, they seem likely. The contemporary news
media, odd in many ways, are never more so than when it comes to their
reticence to talk openly about sex (unless it's Presidential). They talk
about sex scandals and Viagra, but the ordinary experience of sexuality is
almost a taboo. The Net has liberated sex from XXX-rated movie theaters
and porn parlors - it's the third biggest money-maker online, after
e-trading and shopping. For better or worse, it's hard to think of a
bigger killer app for computing and software than sexbots. According to a
computing engineer who asked not to be quoted, prototypes of sexbots
already exist in Japan. "I guarantee you," he e-mailed me, "that within
25 years, programmable, digital sexbots will be in many, if not most,
American homes and apartments." The idea of sexbots will be horrifying to
many, for whom the very idea of mechanized, roboticized human passion is
beyond any Orwellian nightmare. Mary Shelley, who warned in the novel
"Frankenstein" about scientists playing God, and the horrors of unthinking
technology, would have flipped-out over the very idea of sexbots. Yet for
some people - the lonely, the severely handicapped, the isolated - sexbots
could be a great relief and release. And for others - unhappy spouses,
troubled adolescents - digitalized, mechanized sexuality is an open
invitation to addiction or to avoiding problems of face-to-face human
contact. Robotic sex would also eliminate the emotional component of sex.
Like fertility drugs and cloning, this is the kind of technological issue
in urgent need of discussion and consideration, even though history
suggests it won't be thought about much at all in advance. Like the drugs
that give couples the option of having seven or eight children at once, or
the medical technology that prolongs life sometimes beyond reason,
sexbots, will simply be here one day, and we'll be on our own when they
appear. But sexbots are a techno-prediction that has the ring of truth.
Writer Joel Snell predicted in l997 (he's quoted in Richard Rhodes new
book Visions of Technology) that robots providing sexual companionship
were likely to see widespread use in the future. Snell could foresee the
problems. Marriages might be damaged or destroyed if spouses choose sex
with sexbots over making love with their mates. Jealous lovers might
destroy sexbot rivals, or sue manufacturers for emotional damage. On the
other hand, Snell pointed out, people seeking clarity about their sexual
identities would have a safe, reliable way to experiment. Heterosexuals
might use same-sex sexbots to experiment with homosexuality or
bi-sexuality. Gay people might use other-sex sexbots to try out
heterosexuality. Predators with sexual addictions might no longer prey on
human beings. Given that people become addicted to all sorts of pleasures
from slot machines to e-mail, sexbot addiction might be inevitable. Users
could become obsessed by their ever-faithful, willing-to-please sexbot
lovers that never say no or get headaches, and rearrange their lives to
accommodate their addictions. Support groups are inevitable. Or perhaps,
Snell speculates, a new category of sexuality might emerge among humans -
the technovirgin, people who find it simpler, perhaps even preferable, to
have sex exclusively with sexbots. This would avoid all the emotional and
physical complications of having sex with people. Like wondering if it
was as good for them as it was for you. Or as bad. Intuitive and
recognotion technologies are already changing computing, from search
engines to recognition software to voice recognition. Sexbots would almost
surely be programmed to be highly intuitive, keeping track of what worked
and what didn't. They would become better sexual partners as they learned
more about their human counterparts, storing everything from gasps of
pleasure to frequency of orgasm in their memory banks. Every time they had
sex with a human, it might get better. Meanwhile, sexually- transmitted
diseases might fall, along with teen pregnancy, abortions, pedophilia,
prostitution and Viagra prescriptions. The divorce rate might plummet as
well, since Sexbots could keep marital partners happy. The affair itself
might become outmoded. Why take the risk when your sexbot is waiting to
meet your needs? Technology never works in predictable ways. The idea
that computing machines could take over the function of human passion is
as chilling as it is fascinating. But it's also almost totally unexplored.
Neo-Luddites will have a field day with the advent of digital or robotic
sex, as will parents, politicians, teachers, moral guardians. If local
communities flip out whenever Johnny logs onto the Playboy website, and
Congress twice passed blatantly unconstitutional Communications Decency
Acts to regulate "decent" speech online, how might they respond to the
idea of sexbots sold next to Imacs at Compusa? Sex is a hair-trigger
issue in American politics, and the idea of machines performing it
round-the-clock will rock some of the most powerful elements in society.
>From information to MP3's and Open Source software, computing and the
Internet is about freeing up ideas and information and giving individual
people more control over their own lives. It's logical that this
relentless empowerment would extend to experiences like sexuality.
Sexbots seem inevitable. But in a culture that refuses to think much about
either technology or sex, the one thing we do know is that we won't be
ready when they get here.
jonkatz@slashdot.org